Quiet Room - Lori Schiller [57]
“Lori, why is this guy Raymond calling you all the time?
” She shifted around uneasily. “Dad, I told you. He's a friend.”
“Lori, do you think I'm stupid?” I kept my voice low, but she could tell I was serious. “There's something more going on, and I know it. Your mother is worried. I'm worried. Is that guy selling you drugs?”
“No, Daddy,” she said. Her denial was vehement, but I felt she was lying. “He doesn't have anything to do with drugs. He's just a friend I met from the restaurant. We just hang out together.”
“I don't want you meeting that kind of people. I don't want him around here, and I don't want him around you. I think he's a drug dealer.”
“No, Daddy. He's just a friend. He's got nothing to do with drugs.”
There was a long pause. I looked her straight in the eye. “He'd better not,” I said.
But soon it became apparent that she was indeed lying. Even to us it became clear that something was affecting her, something more than her illness. Her mood swings were becoming much more pronounced, and much more rapid. (“Maybe she isn't taking her medicine,” I thought.) The tremor in her hands had increased so that she had trouble performing ordinary tasks like pouring herself a soda. (“Maybe she is taking too much medicine.” ) And she was increasingly agitated. (“Is she taking enough medicine?”) In fact, it seemed like she hardly slept. (“Does she need sleeping pills?”) I was away during the day, so perhaps she slept then when I didn't notice. But at night, I could hear her coming in at one or two o'clock in the morning, and then pacing about until dawn. Finally, Nancy and I decided it was time for a showdown. Lori was involved in something dangerous, and we couldn't stand by any longer. This time I was going to find out what was really going on. Once again I confronted her. When she finally confessed, I blew up.
She wasn't going to do one thing more until she got herself off the drug, I told her. If she couldn't do it herself, then she was going to have to get help. So with a recommendation from Dr. Rockland, Nancy and I arranged to have Lori visit a drug treatment program in Stamford, Connecticut. Three times a week, she drove up there for counseling, group therapy and surprise urine tests.
I knew she could do it, and she did. By August, she was clean.
14
Lori Scarsdale, New York, September 1984–March 1985
By early fall, I was ready to try again with another job, this time one in the mental health field. I knew a lot about it, obviously. Maybe I could help somebody. Dr. Rockland and I talked about it, and he gave me a list of the hospitals in the area. I prepared a résumé—which didn't include my stays at Payne Whitney and New York Hospital—and sent it off.
I didn't actually believe it would work, but it did. I had a number of interviews, and several job offers. I chose to work at Rye Psychiatric Hospital Center because it reminded me least of New York Hospital.
Where New York Hospital was big, with over three hundred beds, Rye Psychiatric was small, a thirty-bed hospital. The road in was short, but it was lined with greenery. It had well-kept lawns and a soothing atmosphere about it. There was a main building and a small side building called “The Cottage” that really did remind me a bit of a country cottage.
But the most important thing was that, unlike New York Hospital, Rye Psychiatric Hospital was not a closed-door facility. As long as they stayed on the hospital grounds, patients were free to come and go as they liked. There were no bars or safety screens on the windows. There were no passkeys or security people in jeeps riding the grounds.
Suddenly, from being a psychiatric patient, I was in charge of other psychiatric patients. After a brief orientation, I began handling the same kinds of jobs that all the other mental health workers did. I helped patients in an assertiveness training group. During recreation, there was arts and crafts, where I